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Chatham Brewing is run by garagistes. They started brewing in an old garage just off Main Street in Chatham, New York. There was a small sign on the sidewalk that pointed visitors to the brewery down a crooked alley. In an old garage, there were several mash tuns, several tanks, tons of small and large kegs, and boxes of growlers. There they brewed their beer and sold it in kegs and growlers. People lined up, tasted the beer, and whatever beer they wanted, Chatham filled a growler with it. It was a rustic scene with no tasting room or pretty setting. It was garage beer, and the beer was great. Word spread, and Chatham became more and more popular.

In 2013, the brewery moved across the street into its current digs. One morning, armed with large tractors with forklifts on their fronts, the entire brewing operation was moved 600 feet. It might as well have been six miles for all that was needed to move the copper works. They did it early on a Sunday morning while traffic was low and people were still asleep.

Since then, their expansion has skyrocketed. The old brew works are now on display in the tasting room. They are making small-batch seasonal beers. The new brewery out back dwarfs the old machinery. Chatham Brewing has taken a huge step forward to the big leagues of New England brewing.

One of the throwbacks to the old days is the porter, the beer that made Chatham famous. The label shows a big puff of black smoke billowing from an old steam locomotive. The porter is a nod to Chatham’s railroading past, when it was a rail hub for northeastern New York. The porter derives its deep color and flavor from chocolate malt.

When poured into a pint glass, the beer shows a good deep dark rich brown-black color. It has a nice frothy beige head that sticks around a while and provides a pretty lacing as you drink it. Very nice.

Chatham Porter smells almost like an iced coffee at first whiff. Roasted coffee and dark baking cocoa come through big. There’s also a touch of hops and a nice smokiness, with a small amount of spice and a hint of anise. The flavor is excellent, with medium body and low carbonation. It starts off with a lovely chocolate malted note, but at a second taste, rich coffee and dark chocolate notes come through loud and clear. A hint of toffee or brown sugar is also present. This is a dry porter with very little or no hint of sweetness. A beautiful, creamy finish lingers on the palate. Coffee and chocolate come through on a nice long finish that lasts and lasts. This is a very easy-drinking beer.

Tiny Nantucket island, thirty miles off the coast of Cape Cod, may seem like an unlikely place for a brewing concern, but it is the home of Cisco Brewers, a triumvirate of brewery, distillery, and winery. Cofounder Wendy Hudson started homebrewing beer in California in the 1990s and introduced her husband and cofounder, Randy Hudson, to the hobby when she returned to Nantucket. Their nanobrewery started in a backyard, with only the air conditioner–cooled cold room indoors. From those humble beginnings as the United States’ only outdoor brewery, Cisco has found success and steadily expanded, bringing sister operations Triple Eight Distillery and Nantucket Vineyard under the Cisco Brewers umbrella.

Cisco’s Captain Swain’s Extra Stout, a bold export stout named after one of Nantucket’s seventeenth-century founders, is one of their finest brews. Brewed with a boatload of malts (thirteen different types, to be precise), the big beer has flavors ranging from dark-roast coffee to blackberries and cherry. With significant notes of smoke and hints of pine from dry hopping with Chinook hops, Captain Swain’s is pleasantly reminiscent of a crackling New England fireplace. It’s a beer fit for a captain and the 8% ABV is surely substantial enough to survive the long journey at sea the style originally was brewed to weather.Review originally printed in The Handbook of Porters and Stouts.

Mad River Brewing Co.is a craft brewery based in Blue Lake, California. Mad River aims to produce English-style ales in an environmentally sound manner. In the late seventies, brewmaster Bob Smith, founder of the Humbrewers Guild, dreamed of opening a small brewery specializing in craft beers. Excursions to buy brewing supplies led Bob to Ken Grossman’s Homebrew Shop in Chico, California. After Ken shared his plans to build Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, Bob became determined to build a craft brewery in Hum-boldt County and began construction in 1989. Mad River has been in business ever since, winning numerous major awards.

This traditionally styled porter has complex malt characteristics balanced with a mild hop profile. Steelhead Scotch Porter is brewed with 2-row pale malt, crystal 70/80, crystal 135/165, chocolate malt, peated malt, Rauch (German smoked malt), and wheat. They then use Willamette as bittering hops and Tettnanger as their finishing hops. The resulting 6.5% ABV porter has a nose and taste of a Scottish ale, with the smoked and peated malts lending a mild smoky flavor.

Pours a dark, dark brown with a khaki head that’s at least two fingers, and lingers for a while. Nice lacing. Chocolate and roasted coffee come through. A hint of sweetness. But a nice balance provided by the hops. A nice complexity. Easy to drink, with a nice, unique flavor profile.Review originally printed in The Handbook of Porters and Stouts.